


The Black Romance of the Cat and the Blue Buffoon

by TeamTired



Series: The 120 Pairing Challenge [20]
Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Biting, Blood, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Dream Bubble, F/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-29
Updated: 2012-07-29
Packaged: 2017-11-10 23:25:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/471889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeamTired/pseuds/TeamTired
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An embittered recently-dead and now quite bloodthirsty Nepeta Leijon prowls the Dream Bubbles, looking for easy prey. When she finds John Egbert, she expects the idiot in the stupid blue costume to die quickly, and when he doesn't, she manages to fall for him in a very black-hearted way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Black Romance of the Cat and the Blue Buffoon

When their bubbles first merged, she daren’t show her face. A proper huntress stalks her prey first. Knowledge is power, and every instant of observation is another potential weakness that she can use against him should things turn ugly. Though naturally now that she was dead losing a fight seemed much less significant, it was the principal of the thing that mattered. She had lost her life by making a careless mistake and acting with her heart. 

She wouldn’t ever let herself make that same mistake twice. 

As she followed him from the shadows, she found herself disgusted by the weakness he displayed. He was just a stupid pink creature in a simple blue outfit, right in the open. As he bumbled through the Alternian jungles of her memories, he consorted with even the mightiest of beasts without any fear. Was he so powerful that he feared nothing, or was he just stupid? 

Though he called out to her, and then to anyone else in the conjoined bubbles, she refused reveal her presence. When she reflected on that later, she would be unable to produce a satisfactory reason for why. Perhaps she wanted to gather more data, or perhaps she was simply uninterested in meeting him.

But it couldn’t be the second, could it? Every minute of the time she had with him was spent with careful study, watching his movements and actions to learn as much as she could. 

When, from the cover of a thick bush, she observed his face, she found it frighteningly babyish; it was the face of an undeveloped child, and certainly not the face of one worthy to wear the raiment of a god tier. 

But he went on, oblivious of her observations and judgement. Meanwhile, that disapproval did not prevent her continued study and fascination.What she found most curious were his eyes, which still held the promise and naivete of a living creature. Not only was this curious defenseless creature an ascended being, he was still alive, which was more than the huntress could say for herself. 

After hours of silent contemplation, the time has finally arrived to strike. An opponent must be properly tested in battle. When she leaps at him, her claws unsheath, eager to taste his alien blood. He doesn’t hear her leap, indicating a lack of awareness. Now only inches away from him, she is almost disappointed. But at the last instant he turns and sees her and instinctively blasts her away with a gust of wind, causing her to slam against a nearby tree. 

Discouraged and confused, she quickly retreats to unseen territory, to lick her wounds and prepare for another strike. She had underestimated her opponent, that much was obvious. What he lacked in awareness he made up for in sheer power, which made him dangerous. He possessed no finesse, and his senses were dull, factors which she would necessarily take advantage of. This creature had made a powerful enemy in Nepeta Leijon. 

It took her two hours of evading him before she was ready to pounce again. Naturally, she could have just waited out the dissolution of the bond between their dream bubbles and counted her losses, but she had a the inkling feeling that the doofus in blue had either gotten lucky or was an incredibly formidable foe, worthy of her attention, and either way she couldn’t waste her chance. 

The second attack was made from closer quarters, to take advantage of his slow reaction times. She hide herself in a pile of brush that she knew he would inevitably pass, and lied in wait. When he passed by close enough, she made the jump directly onto him, successfully latching onto him before he could respond. 

Then came the glorious claws, quick enough to stop his Breath powers. As the cool metal of her barbed claws sank lusciously into his weak flesh, she couldn’t help but smile. She loved it when prey succumbed to her, especially when in this state so many pleasures were denied to her. 

Face to face now, the two were bound through the harshness of Nepeta’ claws. If he blasted her out now, he would lose his own flesh and blood, it was a good enough incentive to force him to operate on her terms. As she looked into his eyes with the dead blankness of her own, she saw the horror that she had craved, it was the familiar horror of a dumb beast in pain.

But then came something completely different. 

Rage. 

In his piercing blue eyes was a white hot rage, a rage that could compete with the skies themselves and that threatened to strike her dead with thunder and hail before she even knew what was going on. It was in that instant that she appreciated the creature that she had just captured. He had impressed her. 

That moment that earned John her blackrom affections, it had concreted him as a worthy adversary to her. He was not without his weaknesses, that much was for sure, but his strengths were an interesting complement to hers. 

It would be a rivalry to relish. 

Naturally, it would not do to kill her prospective kismesis before the games began. That was assuming she could even finish him, considering the absolute power she was sure he held. 

As she sheathed her claws, she felt the glorious sensation of the barbs tearing through his flesh again, doing even more damage on the way out. It would not be enough to cripple him, she had made sure of that, but the claws would leave a lasting impression. They always did. But a few claw-marks, even if they came with their own internal damage, was not enough to let him know that her intentions. She had no way of knowing if his primitive brain could comprehend the joy of a violent rivalry, but there were a few ways of knowing. 

Still hanging onto him, she wrapped her arms around him and bit into his shoulder, careful not to hit a major blood vessel. His flesh was sweet and easy, yielding without protest to her mighty jaws. As she drew blood, she tasted it and reveled in it. It too was delightful, in its own way. The sharp iron tang challenged her in a way no other blood had. Like the claws, it was not a bite meant to cripple, onto to deliver pain and a message. 

The message naturally being “I’m terribly interested in hating you”.

She could feel him pushing away again, which wouldn’t do if they were to pursue a proper black romance. Kismesissitude only worked when the two parties were on an elegant self-destruct course, both of them obsessed only with the demise or at least defeat of the other. She wasn’t sure if she would understand her, but she figured it wouldn’t hurt to try communicating with him. 

“now now now i cant let you get away quite that easily

you s33 i intend to track you and fight you for as long as you occupy this particular part of paradox space 

youve sucessfully drawn my ire and such a mistake isnt furgiven quickly

i am the mighty huntress nepeta leijon

and i want to s33 you fall evfur so badly”

He grimaced. Good. That meant that he understood at least part of what she had said. That was a start. Then he took a turn to speak. His voice was young and innocent, and it matched him to a tee. But his words defied the very nature of the voice that surrounded them. 

"well i am john egbert, heir of breath, and i don’t mind telling you 

that you have just made a very powerful enemy.”

Nepeta drew closer and took a nip off his ear, just enough to cause him pain, before she whispered to him.

"good”

With that she leapt backwards, back into the dense Alternian brush from whence she came. When John came to his senses, he formed a blade of air and sent it slicing through the jungle after her, but she was long gone from then. John did the same thing again, destroying another section of jungle. With each failure to find his new rival, John’s rage grew, as did his powers. Eventually, he had struck out in every direction in a full circle, and his final attack consisted of a veritable tornado that went whipping through the bubble, destroying over a mile of foilage. 

Meanwhile, Nepeta was crouching at a distance, taking it all in. It was the fresh start of a kismesissitude, and that meant hot anger, the kind that leveled cities. Naturally, being a romance buff, Nepeta knew that the best kismesissitudes were meticulous and cold as ice, but she could excuse her new partner for being fresh to the game. She herself was stewing in a similar vat of passion, which she knew would simmer with time to form exactly the sort of blackrom feelings that legends were made of. 

She planned her next attack. It was obvious to her that John was a novice, and so it would be up to her to initiate their first few meetings. Naturally, this was considered bad form on Alternia, but she would excuse his poor manners until the two stood at a more even cultural footing. 

The synthesis of an attack plan was a daunting prospect, most notably because a truly elegant attack is one that takes into account enough of an opponent’s weaknesses to be effective, without taking into account so many that the attack becomes lethal. Nepeta silently made a mental list of John’s strengths and weaknesses. A properly committed kismesis could spend months plotting their next attack, and the greatest kismesissitudes in history had interims that lasted decades or more between confrontations, but this romance still felt new and fresh, and Nepeta wanted to keep it that way. Not to mention the fact that since the bubbles could separate at any moment, it was important to get her time in early. 

Her next attack forgave him for his poor reaction times by giving him plenty of time to react, but punished him for his deficit in senses. As she moved just loudly enough through the trees for him to hear her, she was careful to rustle quiet enough that couldn’t triangulate her position quite well enough to actually land a hit. As blades of air snapped off branches near her, she grinned with delight. As she moved closer and closer, she stuck to the shadows, abusing his abysmal low-light vision. When she crossed the threshold into the light, she saw with no small amount of dread the attack that he had been preparing. When he unleashed his next attack, she was immediately assaulted with a thousand tiny blades of air, which gleefully made their way through her flesh, delivering a substantial amount of pain without immobilizing her.  
Either he was pulling punches for some reason, or he had decided all of the sudden to be dreadfully romantic. As she pulled herself from the ground, wincing at the sight of the droplets of olive that had spotted the ground, she looked up to find him standing in wait. 

Perhaps John had some manners after all. 

She closed the final distance between them in an instant, and her first strike was made with full intent to mar, complete with her trademark claws. He dodged however, sidestepping her attack effortlessly. Then came the retaliation, a strike at her elbow that probably would have broken a lesser species’ arm. Even though it didn’t deal and permanent damage, it certainly hurt quite a bit. Her next few jabs were dodged as well, as John floated out of her way, as insubstantial as the wind. When she did manage to land a few hits, they were all glancing blows, drawing only a few drops of his beautiful red blood to the surface. 

His counterattacks were impressive, and seemingly driven by the same primal force as the storms in the sky. Though they lacked any real lethality, they all delivered the same painful message: that John was not one to be trifled with. When Nepeta let her guard down for even a second, John was able to shove her away. With the look he gave her, she was convinced that he was able to call down lightning to strike her where she stood. But instead his blue eyes only met her perfectly blank gaze, and when his gaze turned to frozen fascination, she found a window for escape. 

During the next planning session, Nepeta found herself at a loss. There was no question that John’s aptitude for black romance was much stronger than she had anticipated, which certainly excited her in ways her old moirail would certainly have called ““l00d”, but he wasn’t around anymore, and while the hoofbeast was away, the cat would play. 

Her concentration was broken when a windstorm destroyed a nearby tree, bringing it crashing down. It took a potentially deadly minute for her to realize that in all likelihood, that was not a totally natural windstorm. 

She went on the move, reasoning that she had the best chance of victory if she outmaneuvered him and stayed moving. Even the worst storms could be outran. When she was confident that she had enough distance on him to rest for a moment, she allowed herself a brief glance back at the center of the tempest. What was in his eyes was no longer white hot rage, it was an eerie calm, like the eye of a storm. 

His hate had matured, just as Nepeta had hoped. Now the good stuff could start.


End file.
